


Number Five

by CarpeDiemForLife



Series: The Loneliest Number [5]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:15:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26149297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarpeDiemForLife/pseuds/CarpeDiemForLife
Summary: All of the Hargreeves children know what it is to be lonely. It claims them each in different ways and at different times, but loneliness is the family's constant companion.--Series of ficlets examining the loneliness of each character. Fifth: Five.
Series: The Loneliest Number [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885654
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38





	Number Five

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't able to make the formatting work the same way it does in Word, so... I did my best to compensate! Hope people still like it.

Loneliness scratched and ripped and clawed at Five until, one day, the ragged landscape of his psyche broke and reshaped itself into insanity.

Corpses. Craters. Catastrophe.

_Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall_

_down_

run and search and cry and scream

Isolation was torture to humans. This was a well-documented fact. Five was perfectly cognizant of what his life had become and what it had done to his mind.

He just didn’t care.

Rubble. Ruins. Wreckage.

_There won't be any trumpets blowin' come the judgement day_

walk and walk and walk and walk

When the only way to keep his mind was to lose it, Five embraced madness with open arms. Survival was all that mattered. Anything that kept him alive long enough to get back to his family.

Dust. Darkness. Despair.

_Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies_

eat and sleep and read and talk and learn and wait and plan

Forty-three years, and insanity became reality. A mannequin for his closest confidant; and she was much more than that, besides. Delores was all. She was friend, partner, and lover. She was as real to him as the ground beneath his feet and the sun up in the sky, and far more dear.

With Delores, he was never alone.

But he never forgot his family. So when an opportunity arose for him to escape the Apocalypse, he took it, even though it meant leaving her behind.

She understood.

The next two years were a string of jobs and schemes. No time to rest, no time to think of anything but _the plan_. More than forty years had done nothing to dampen his distaste for taking orders, but they _had_ taught him patience. If passing under the yoke was what it took to get back to his family, he would do it. He would do much more.

Finally, breakthrough. As soon as the equation was ready, he jumped.

He found his family.

It wasn’t enough. He felt unsettled. Seeing them all again caused an odd ache in his sternum, a feeling long forgotten and wholly unpleasant. At the first chance he got, he sought out Delores, relieved to reunite with the love of his life, his better half, his tether to sanity. Her company was a salve on the emotions he didn’t dare face.

But Five wasn’t in the Apocalypse anymore. He wasn’t in a world of his own making, where madness molded reality like Play-Doh and truth was mere window dressing. To save the world, he had to see it as it was. Become a part of it again.

With great reluctance, Five returned Delores to her store. As he did, he felt the last vestiges of his insanity crumble like a rock wall beneath sea spray. He fortified the structure with sheer stubborn tenacity as best he could for the time being—days before the Apocalypse wasn’t an appropriate time for a mental breakdown.

Still, he knew it was coming. Only a matter of time.

Time, always the villain of his tale. The ever-present monster lurking over his shoulder, ready to snatch him up in its hungry, slathering jaws at the first sign of weakness. Finally it would come for him— _the effects it might have on your body, even on your mind, are far too unpredictable_ —and swallow whole its long-awaited prize:

The boy. Lost and afraid. Trapped. Alone for forty-three years.

for forty-three

years

Shaking, trembling, cold in the dark. Screaming out. Crying for his family. With a loneliness greater than any human mind could endure, held only at bay by a brokenness he could no longer afford to keep. His newly repaired mind would soon catch up to him, and that would be the end.

Time would be his demise; Five had always known that. But loneliness was the gun, locked and loaded. It was too late now to run.

He only needed to avoid its blast long enough to save his siblings.

**Author's Note:**

> When I tell you that I am excessively emo about this family... I'm not kidding lol
> 
> Would love to hear from y'all! Thanks for reading <3


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